Returning

Returning
to the hot room
and twenty-six poses
I find myself

Again

It’s different
this time—
That’s one thing
I count on

Change

Resist it and die
open to it
and live
to tell the tale

Time goes on like a river,
soon leaves us all behind

Spin the wheel
round and round and round
we go—
where it stops,
no one knows

I am prepared
for the eventuality of all things

Death—
Andy says
until that very moment
I will be alive
so I don’t worry

Two sessions
after ten months away
and I know that I can live without it
and I don’t have to

I do the yoga and
the heaviness in my chest
sprouts wings and flies away

There is beautiful blue light
in my clitoris
and the smooth rolling of
glass marbles

The eyes of God
see my pleasure

Harpy sulks in the tree top
The nest is empty
Crows pillaged
Tore the entrails from the baby

The two survivors
scream at us
through the window

They are safe
Our love
is like the sun
Always there,
even in the dark

The time we spend
As we pass this way
We might not ever
be here again
So hold on tight
to what you find


*I quoted Tom Cochrane's
Washed Away
Thanks, Tom

A Pappas Parachute

"When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness.
Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other." Margaret Wheatley

We broke up for personal reasons. This is not that story. This story is about how we got back together again, the ultimate happy ending.

Once upon a time a spirit in the form of a little red-haired girl visited a young woman of the childbearing age whose biological clock was neither ticking or ringing, it was stuck on a permanent wake up call. Biology, evolution, epi-genetics, fantasy, woo woo, and culture all combined to deliver a powerful kick in the ass, and the young woman finally woke up to the potential of becoming a mother.

A mother. Well, she’d need to meet the father, didn’t she. So, she said, yes, what the fuck, yes, yes, yes, oh, yes! And a whole wonderful series of events unfolded that continue to this day.

Read on, gentle reader, and suspend your disbelief. Enjoy. For this is no ordinary tale. It is a story of magic and mystery, of beauty and benevolence. It anchors my faith, in what exactly, I cannot say, for it has no name that I have encountered. It needs no name. It will inspire you.

While we may feel fear and experience doubts and darkness and all manner of demons, the light, think of it—light!—dispels the night. Even in the deepest days of winter, the light returns. And the tiniest pinprick of light can be seen blinking at us from the endlessly vast reaches of the beginning of time and universal darkness, which, we understand, is actually composed of warm pockets of friendly hydrogen waiting, in utero, for the right conditions to create stars.

What, dear reader, catalyzes the event? Science is beginning to plumb the depths of this question. Somewhere along the line, the actual ingredients combine with the results of experiences, and voila, the rest, as they say, is history.

So I am, as Alfred Lord Tenyson wrote, “a part of all that I have met; and all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move.”

In other words, I had no idea, when I climbed up to Diana Lake with my friend and her two children, and we invoked angels, innocently, mind you, through talking of them and childishly believing in them, of the intricately knotted rope that I would become tied into.

I cannot say more, yet, for I want you to read on, and enjoy, as I did, the journey, undertaken, as all the best adventures, in a craft as sturdy and yet as delicate as the dandelion’s achenes which move from place to place on a parachute of fluff called a pappus. Fly with me, won’t you? I’m sure you will enjoy the ride.

At the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no one could have dreamt would have come one's way…
'Whatever you can do,
or dream you can - begin it!
Boldness has genius, power
and magic in it.'--W.H. Murray, Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951

The May Two-Four Weekend

Andy and I spent this most famous of Canadian long weekends in Skaha, a rock climbers' paradise located in sagebrush-Ponderosa pine country near Penticton, BC.

The boys spent the weekend in Victoria with their dad.

This is the second year in a row that Andy and I have driven out to meet our friends and spend the weekend climbing rock, hiking, talking, laughing, and drinking the odd beer. Not to mention basking in the heat.

Andy says I do all right on the rock seeing's how I hardly ever climb otherwise.

Maybe that's because I'm always climbing something in my life.

Particularly where it concerns living the part of my life which doesn't include the boys.

I remember the pain in Andy's eyes when he first realized that this sense of loss I felt when the boys were not with us was not something fleeting, and that it was hard for me to enjoy myself when the boys were not with us. He told me it made him sad that he couldn't make me happy all the time. I was surprised that he took it so personally. This was, I thought, about me.

Well, this weekend, it was not so much about me. It was about seeing the quality of the bigger picture: Andy and I enjoyed each other's company in a way that many couples with kids rarely do; the boys experienced that part of their life that doesn't include me. I was able to lose myself in the enjoyment of company, comestibles, and cragging. It was all right to enjoy myself even though the boys were not there.

We're back home in the coastal rain. The sun and heat are just memories imprinted on our tanned skin. My fingertips are abraded from clinging to gneiss crimpers. My toes are sore from being jammed into minute little sedimentary divots on the rock wall. Andy's building a fire. Emu cat is exhausted after tearing around the house to celebrate being released from our travel trailer. Magic looks like she never moved off her pillow beside the fireplace. The boys are back tomorrow.

"What would it look like," psychologist Allison Rees asked me, "if you were okay with these separations?"

It would look a lot like this weekend.

5:20 a.m.

The early bird gets the worm.

Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

That's what they say about early risers.
Like me, my dad, my brother.
My boys.

It’s never too early,
it's never too late,
it's never too inconvenient

to be present.
That is love.

And how do I make sure
there is enough for me?

I trust,
in the long run,
the bigger picture,
that there is more than I even want.

The other day they argued:
"I love you as big as the universe," said Secundo.
"I love you as big as the sky."

"The universe is bigger than the sky," said Primo.

"The universe is the biggest thing there is," I said.
"So, that's a lot of love. Wow!"

Then Secundo, not yet four, says: "The sky is bigger."

"No, it's not,!" asserted the elder,
still always technically more correct.

"Yes, it is!"
"No, it's not!"
The beautiful moment morphed
into a sibling squabble.

And I basked in it.
A conversation about love never goes awry.

"Well, guys, how about this."
Ever the mediator:
"The sky is the part of the universe that you can see,"
I said.

And there's so much more.

When we extend ourselves, we grow.